Wayfinders: Lift Him Up - TWCC 8-24-25

[SPEAKER_00]: Greetings, this is Dr. Darrell Hall, Passed Away Community Church, and welcome to our podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm excited today because we're about to study the word of God in John chapter four and look at the life of the woman at the whale as an example of what a wayfinder really looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can find all these notes in the Bible app or you can follow us in the transcript on this podcast.

[SPEAKER_00]: Grab your word, let's study together.

[SPEAKER_00]: First, twenty-eight says in the New American Standard Bible, so the woman left her water pot and went into the city.

[SPEAKER_00]: And said to the people, come see a man who told me all the things that I have done.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the Christ, is he?

[SPEAKER_00]: They left the city and were coming to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Verse number thirty-nine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, from that city, many of the Samaritan's believed in him, because of the word of the woman who they watch all.

[SPEAKER_00]: He told me all the things that I have done, so when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking him to stay with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: He stayed there two days, many more believed because of his word, and they were saying to the woman, is no longer because of what you said that we believe, but we have heard for ourselves.

[SPEAKER_00]: And know that this one truly is the Savior of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to continue our wayfinder series with this long lift to him up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lift him up.

[SPEAKER_00]: You made me seated in the presence of the living God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lift him up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like many of us in the room and virtual, I have become so co-dependent.

[SPEAKER_00]: on the GPS that I will use technology to tell me how to get from somewhere to somewhere I've been a thousand times.

[SPEAKER_00]: This morning I used the GPS to drive from my house to this church and I've been driving.

[SPEAKER_00]: From my house to this church it leads to a three times a week for fifteen years but still I want to save two minutes

[SPEAKER_00]: some of us at GPS.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got real savvy when technology began to help us do what people used to help us do.

[SPEAKER_00]: You remember going to the country and you trying to find your way to the family, cook out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And you go as far as you remember to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so you stop at the local convenience store or gas station and you ask the man in the gas station how to get down to the family area.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm talking about the dude who got a cigarette hanging out his mouth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And no matter how much he taught me, what all he say to cigarette never actually follow.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he taught like this real fast.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he tells you stuff like drive down for about by, by thirteen minutes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then you're gonna see a big rock on the left.

[SPEAKER_00]: After that big rock, you're gonna go a stone throw away.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then you're gonna make a right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You gotta slow down.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those the street gonna have a street sign.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a dirt road.

[SPEAKER_00]: about stones throw from the big rock.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a street on the right.

[SPEAKER_00]: You make a right right there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Drop about nine, about seven minutes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look for the smoke.

[SPEAKER_00]: You made it to the barbecue.

[SPEAKER_00]: So all five senses and ladies, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: You look and you listen.

[SPEAKER_00]: You smell it for smoke.

[SPEAKER_00]: You try to make sure you got where you were going.

[SPEAKER_00]: Somebody gave you some directions that sound that sketch you when they were giving them to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not until you started on the journey towards the destination that you realize, even though he seemed a little off.

[SPEAKER_00]: He knew he was talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Life is like that, isn't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: We've all had people who tried to give us, if it would, directions towards our destiny.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the things they told us at the time didn't really sound like they knew what they were talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: We probably misjudged them about how they would dress or how they appeared and we assumed they didn't know what they were talking about because who would hate to tell us how they get what we were going.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's not until you get on this journey called life that you start to look back and realize

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe my social studies teacher wasn't wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe my Sunday school teacher knew what they were talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe my auntie who I try to avoid, because I don't think she got it all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe she actually got a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: You start to get in life and realize that the people who gave you instructions, even if they didn't give you verbatim.

[SPEAKER_00]: what to do right.

[SPEAKER_00]: Life will teach you that.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people you missed just before actually have more wisdom than you could appreciate in a moment and it turns out after all they were a wayfinder for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: They were somebody who were pointing you the way, giving you guidance, trying to help you navigate, even if it seemed like they hadn't made it to the destination that they were trying to get to them.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see, that's what God has called us to be in his life.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's called us to beat that person at the gas station who were someone as lost and they pulled to the side so he can help.

[SPEAKER_00]: We lift him up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now on the benefit we have is we're not pointing people to a place, we're pointing people to a person.

[SPEAKER_00]: to the personal Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is not about religion, this is about freedom, this is about truth, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: This is about the real thing, some might call the real McCoy.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not pointing people to a certain destination.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not pointing people to a certain educational status, socioeconomic achievement.

[SPEAKER_00]: All that that is good and great.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want us to have a little piece of that too.

[SPEAKER_00]: But our main goal, our main thing, is to lift him up.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that as we lift, he will draw people to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's what John did in John chapter one.

[SPEAKER_00]: For the last couple of weeks, we've been looking at our brother, John the Baptist, or some of us know him as John the Baptist.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we thought he was John the Baptist because he went to a Baptist church.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Baptist Churches didn't exist to about fifteen hundred.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was John the Baptist because that was his job.

[SPEAKER_00]: He baptized people.

[SPEAKER_00]: So they called him John the dude who be baptized in people.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what he did was he lift up Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: When he saw Jesus coming, he said, behold, the Lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as he lifted up Jesus, the people following John, left John to follow Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we can appreciate through that brother that voice, crying in the wilderness, how his efforts to lift up Jesus actually pointed people to the way that they should go.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we turn the page in this book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we find ourselves now in John chapter four, saying book.

[SPEAKER_00]: different story saying Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: In this occasion, he's meeting with a woman who is unnamed, but where he meets her is what matters.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not just where he meets her geographically.

[SPEAKER_00]: We know what that is.

[SPEAKER_00]: In Samaria, an a land called Sikar, next to a whale that belongs to Jacob San Joseph.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's not just where he meets her.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's where she is when he meets her.

[SPEAKER_00]: That helps us to appreciate one of the things I love the most about the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody in the Bible is a perfect example.

[SPEAKER_00]: But everybody in the Bible is a real example.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's only one perfect example in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody else in the Bible does everything right.

[SPEAKER_00]: But everybody whose stories are captured in Scripture are not there to be perfect examples.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are there to be real examples.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if Sister Girl was anything else, she was real.

[SPEAKER_00]: As Jesus engaged her, she was honest and truthful.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we learned this simple truth that the Lord unexpected us to be perfect, but the Lord does require that we be honest.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was a real example of someone who pointed people to the way.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, our thing for this series, or our big idea for this series is that there is more to church and there is more to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Say that with me on the count of three.

[SPEAKER_00]: One, two, three.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is more to church and there is more to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm saying is there's more to church than you just coming here once a week, you know,

[SPEAKER_00]: Twice, I'm like, no judgment.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here every week because this is my job.

[SPEAKER_00]: You go to your job more than I do, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: So there's more to church than you just come in to the sanctuary of a few times a month for worship.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me and there's more than you than just being a spectator of the unknowing tick ones.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't miss it just because I got the microphone.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't miss it.

[SPEAKER_00]: God called you to be a spectator or a fanatic of my ministry or my leadership.

[SPEAKER_00]: And his woman shows us what that more looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: She gets into this conversation about worship in a temple or on a mountain.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus essentially says to her, there's more to that.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's more to church than what you think.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's more to worship than where you do it.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's more to you than how you're living.

[SPEAKER_00]: and he engaged her in a thoughtful and honest, sub-surface, so deep dialogue that helped her appreciate the truth, that not only is it more to church, but it was also more to her.

[SPEAKER_00]: And no sooner than she was changed, than she immediately began to try to show other people the way to life with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you've never read the story in John chapter four, I commend it to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: My goal between the day and next week is to finish it, but between now and then, I want to ask you to read it at least once.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as we consider this woman's story in John chapter four, we're going to ask some investigator questions.

[SPEAKER_00]: just like we did with John, right?

[SPEAKER_00]: The five W's in the one age, who went where, why, how?

[SPEAKER_00]: Not in that order, but those are the questions we're going to use to learn more about this story.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the first thing we'll ask number one, what is a wayfinder?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let the church say, what is a wayfinder?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I know I'm restating this, but I just want to make sure we're all on the same page.

[SPEAKER_00]: A wayfinder is a tool or a person that helps someone navigate.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a tool or a person.

[SPEAKER_00]: Turn left.

[SPEAKER_00]: That helps you to navigate.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, in a spiritual sense, what we see in John Four is that a wayfinder is someone who lifts him up.

[SPEAKER_00]: By encouraging you to come see for yourself who Jesus used.

[SPEAKER_00]: Looking John chapter four, verse number twenty nine, what did the woman say when she went out to the people?

[SPEAKER_00]: The first two verses of chapter two of verse twenty nine, she said, what?

[SPEAKER_00]: Come see.

[SPEAKER_00]: In that moment, she's acting as a wayfinder.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come here, let me show you something.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't take my word for it.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to see for yourself.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then verse starting, I'll say is that because of the word of the woman who did what church testify, you see it was her testimony that gave power confidence that tell other people come and see.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna pause here because some of us think you can't point people to Jesus because you don't know enough of the Bible yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: One thing can be true, but that doesn't automatically make the next thing true.

[SPEAKER_00]: You may not know enough of the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: According to what you think you should know, but that doesn't mean you can't start pointing people to Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hear me because you don't need to have the Bible memorized anyway.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what all you need to memorize is, your testimony.

[SPEAKER_00]: who you are, what you were doing, what you were up to, when the Lord found you, how to lower, met you, the mercy the Lord gave you, how to lower, chimes you, and what the Lord is doing in your life right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you can tell your own story, from Heaven's point of view, you got all you need to show somebody else the way, because your story matters.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your testimony is unique.

[SPEAKER_00]: your testimony has life in it.

[SPEAKER_00]: So learn your own story and be willing to retell it.

[SPEAKER_00]: What I love about this sister is, is soon as the Lord engages her, she starts engaging other people for the Lord.

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't wait to know more before she started to show the little she did, no?

[SPEAKER_00]: Soon as she was impacted, she started to go get people.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come see with the Lord, it's done for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what she was inviting people to do was to join her on a journey of discovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a journey of discovery is one of the values here to weigh community church.

[SPEAKER_00]: What that means is we have no religious expectation for anybody to be anywhere yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: My only expectation of you as your pastor and brother in Christ is that wherever you are, you are willing to do this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Take the next step forward in your journey of discovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have no expectation that you know what you don't know, no expectation that you are who you are not yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: The only thing I want to encourage you to do is have the confidence

[SPEAKER_00]: to take the next step in your journey of discovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we will learn is, is that a journey of discovery disorient and reorient us to Jesus over and over again to a process I want to show you real quick.

[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever you learn about the Lord, whenever you take a step forward and a Lord, usually the first thing that's going to happen is a interruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: then an interruption is going to lead to ignorance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Your ignorance, if your honest about it, opens you up to receive new information.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you accept that new information, it will give you insight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Knowledge is facts, wisdom is what to do with the facts in the context of the life I'm living.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once I get that insight, I'm inspired now to evolve into the person this interruption was sent to make me from the beginning.

[SPEAKER_00]: Every, I'm gonna run that back.

[SPEAKER_00]: And interruption, what you mean rare, something that happens in your life that you cannot control and did not see coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: Has anybody ever been there?

[SPEAKER_00]: Interruptions may be bad or may be good, but always have a divine outcome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because the interruption does is, this audience, the person who needs to learn something new that we didn't know we needed to learn.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what happens, Roya?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm living my life, like his golden.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, but the Lord wants to reveal something to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: So to get my attention, the Lord allows an interruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could be good, it could be bad, but the point is it disorient.

[SPEAKER_00]: What's some interrupted by something I didn't see coming and could not control?

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I have come face to face with my ignorance, because I didn't know what I didn't know until I was interrupted to realize I didn't know it.

[SPEAKER_00]: and ignorance is not necessarily a bad thing until you use pride to cover it up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ignorance is, I don't know, pride is a machine, because I don't know.

[SPEAKER_00]: The interruption reveals my ignorance.

[SPEAKER_00]: If I embrace my ignorance, I'm open now to new information.

[SPEAKER_00]: that new information as I learned it and processes it, processes it gives me insight.

[SPEAKER_00]: The insight inspires me.

[SPEAKER_00]: Vast the journey of discovery.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when you hear a journey of discovery, don't think straight line.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because anybody who's lived any time knows life is not lived in the straight line.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're not going to get saved in just run with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: No.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to feel more like this.

[SPEAKER_00]: But when you think cycle, don't think flat cycle, think the more I go around, the higher in glory I go.

[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes you can think you know the law for real and to a new interruption reminds you you still got more to learn.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why you got to be humble when you deal with people who are behind you on the journey because I ain't none of us in heaven yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord got an interruption for all of us that can make you unlearn everything you thought you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I'm going to show it to y'all with the woman at the well.

[SPEAKER_00]: After I tell y'all this story about me, you can laugh if you want to.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I had to be, I think, man, it was like, twenty-two or twenty-three.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I know we only had Dylan at the time, who's now a senior at high school.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we had only been married like a year.

[SPEAKER_00]: And tomorrow, we'll be eight, ten years.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll be eight, ten years and a half.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's streaming, so.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm finna wrap this up.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be home in a minute.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a little child girl.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we just want to only marry for a year at the time.

[SPEAKER_00]: We only had Dylan.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was a baby.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we needed a new car.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I bought this cash car from a buy here, pay here a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: Mother bacon, you already?

[SPEAKER_00]: Mother bacon, you know, I had to learn Mother bacon.

[SPEAKER_00]: I needed this interruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I bought a car from right here, pay here a lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was a cash car.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was a nineteen ninety eight light blue acro RL.

[SPEAKER_00]: That thing was smooth.

[SPEAKER_00]: It had a look dry to I mean it had two hundred thousand miles on it, but

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, just a minor detail, you know?

[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't new, it was new to me, you know what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_00]: I bought a car cash, just all the cash we had, bought a car, drive off the lot.

[SPEAKER_00]: I bus a left up here, I'm on Evan's meal, I bus a left home, I think it was coming to highway.

[SPEAKER_00]: right there by the bottom part.

[SPEAKER_00]: I see the blue lights.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, oh, oh, they probably see the tip tag.

[SPEAKER_00]: They probably think, you know what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_00]: I pull a lower bone.

[SPEAKER_00]: They come to the window.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sir, I need to see your license and your proof of insurance.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, oh, y'all believe this.

[SPEAKER_00]: What had happened was... Some like, look, man.

[SPEAKER_00]: I literally just bought this car.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the paperwork.

[SPEAKER_00]: You see this, man?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me call a guy called right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, get out of the car.

[SPEAKER_00]: Set me on the car.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put my new tummy, silver, I mean, blue, acroer, L on the back of this tow truck.

[SPEAKER_00]: Gave me the number to the impound yard and say, this is where you can pick your car up.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm sitting out here on the curb in front of the parking stone watching my new to me car.

[SPEAKER_00]: Get told to the empire, y'all.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I got to call my uncle, go to my uncle house, get guy go to give me insurance.

[SPEAKER_00]: I told her I ain't having a money.

[SPEAKER_00]: So now I got to get the insurance in that moment.

[SPEAKER_00]: Just pay cash for the car.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then I got to go get the car out of the empire.

[SPEAKER_00]: So then Dylan had to eat noodles for the rest of the week.

[SPEAKER_00]: What happened?

[SPEAKER_00]: I had an interruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: The interruption revealed my ignorance.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't leave a car light without getting insurers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Once I acknowledge my ignorance, I got new information.

[SPEAKER_00]: The information gave me wisdom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now I don't even know where before insurer anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: I go by a new self on them like, hey, y'all got that assuring.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, let me get that phone protector right there.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't even take the phone out of the box so I got a case to put the phone in.

[SPEAKER_00]: Everything in my life-insure, I'm insured, my car insured, my house is insured, this church is insured.

[SPEAKER_00]: I got the wisdom now.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's how life teaches, isn't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: This woman at the well was ashamed of the light she was living so much so that she tried to avoid all the other women.

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't have to look the sisters in her face because she don't want to feel judged by what they knew or thought they knew by her.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she decided she's going to come to this well to get water at a time of day that nobody else is there.

[SPEAKER_00]: So she thinks she's got the perfect strategy to avoid people shows up at the well and Jesus is there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus interrupts her whole plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because the Lord of Do that, you sneaking around in your shame, trying to avoid accountability, you all want to be seen for who you think people think you are, and have to answer questions to people that you own, wish you had to answer to, and the Lord of Carmeets you right in the middle of your shame, and interrupt you in your whole plan.

[SPEAKER_00]: She shows up to the well.

[SPEAKER_00]: She all know it's a well sitting on a well.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's coming to Bucket to get some water.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says, can you get me some water too?

[SPEAKER_00]: She said, I'm used to do is how let me, but I'm.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you are Jewish man.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm a Samaritan woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: All the dudes who, how let me, they not Jewish.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what are we talking about?

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said, I need some water.

[SPEAKER_00]: She said, how are you going to get some water?

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have a bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, really, really, I asked some water from you thinking you would have the spiritual discernment to answer water for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, because the water I got for you, you would never thirst again.

[SPEAKER_00]: She like, oh, give me some of that water.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, okay, go call your husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: She says, I don't have a husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I know.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've had five.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the one you we know is not your husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: She said, so you are prophet us all.

[SPEAKER_00]: Said she's so prophetical.

[SPEAKER_00]: Where should we worship?

[SPEAKER_00]: on this mountain or in the temple.

[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus said for him, worship her name about where it's at, it's about spirit and truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: She said, well, all right, I know the Messiah coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I who speak to you and he, she dropped the water pot ran to the city and said, come see your man.

[SPEAKER_00]: And everybody needs to say, if anybody know anything about a man, it's hurt.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got to see this.

[SPEAKER_00]: He must be him.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's kind of high heaven.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's interrupted by Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: After the interruption, it reveals her ignorance about true spiritual things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then she receives new information about water.

[SPEAKER_00]: She never thought about to quench her soul's issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then she got the insight when she said, I know the Messiah is coming.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, I'll who speak to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he, then when she realized what was happening, she was inspired and it changed her from the woman she was when she walked up to that well.

[SPEAKER_00]: True change starts when the interruption, and when Jesus wants to take you on the journey of discovery beyond what you've ever seen, he'll start when the interruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to look at this picture.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at this cycle.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is how it happens.

[SPEAKER_00]: Interruption leads to ignorance.

[SPEAKER_00]: These you'd information, which will give you insight and inspire you.

[SPEAKER_00]: But that's how it looks from the top down.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not the experience, because it's not just a cycle.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a cycle that transcends.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's zoom out and flip this thing up.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what we'll notice is, is that this cycle takes you higher with every wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Shout out to the Deacon Grant Curtis, who created these first.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the Lord of Start you with an interruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: The interruption will open you up to your own ignorance.

[SPEAKER_00]: The ignorance gives you space to receive information.

[SPEAKER_00]: The information gives you insight.

[SPEAKER_00]: The insight inspires you and now you just went up a leveling glory.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you go from glory to glory starting with the interruption on a level you was on that a leave you with inspiration for the level you go into.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why you can't expect nobody to be anywhere because everybody coming from somewhere, going to somewhere and a none of us made a joke.

[SPEAKER_00]: A wayfinder is one that shows you the way and that way is shown through interruption.

[SPEAKER_00]: I very on Alicia Walker would say this way, a wayfinder is someone who knows Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: grows to be more like him and intentionally shows people the way to life with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what I love about this woman at the well is she didn't wait to get super sanctified before she start showing people.

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't wait to know more.

[SPEAKER_00]: She took what she knew in that moment and leveraged that for the good of the people who were in her influence.

[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, we see what is a way of finding number two.

[SPEAKER_00]: After this question, I'll bid you a do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Who can be a way finder?

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at verse number seventeen.

[SPEAKER_00]: I already quoted it to you, but let's read it together.

[SPEAKER_00]: The woman answered and said to him, I have no husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus said to her, you have correctly said I have no husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: For you have had five husbands.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the one whom you have now is not your husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: What you say is true.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's.

[SPEAKER_00]: What Jesus is saying is, I don't need you to be perfect, but I do need you to keep it a hundred.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can have a conversation about anything you did or didn't do anywhere you've been and haven't been.

[SPEAKER_00]: What I can't do is be real with you if you're going to be fake with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you keep it real with me, what's going to shock you is, how my grace is going to use the very thing you was ashamed of to authenticate your voice when you tell your testimony from this day forward.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because the stuff you are ashamed of is really what's going to make your story connect to people with a certain type of story.

[SPEAKER_00]: And grace is doing, won't it?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[SPEAKER_00]: Grace is taking shame and repurpose shame to be a testimony.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then that testimony will earn like other people's future in a way you never could have predicted.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, what you have said is true.

[SPEAKER_00]: A couple verses later, she says, come see a man who told me all the things I've done.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the Christ is he.

[SPEAKER_00]: This makes me think about this all the amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a rich like me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I once was lost, but now I went church, but now I'm fine, was blind, but now I see.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we ask the question, who can be a wayfonder?

[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord could have just found you and already used you to help find somebody else.

[SPEAKER_00]: You ain't gotta be found for long?

[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have to be super sanctified.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord could have just found you.

[SPEAKER_00]: and already used you to find somebody else.

[SPEAKER_00]: He just found this woman sneaking around at the way of avoiding other women.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as she engages with him, now she's been used to go find other people who didn't know about the lower.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to just look at this contrast for a quick.

[SPEAKER_00]: between John, the Baptist, and the woman at the wheel.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I think sometimes we think we gotta be a certain type of way for the Lord to use us.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the contrast between this man and his woman gives us the gamut or the continuum of humanity that helps us in a very real way find that I don't have to be perfect for the Lord to use me.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so we got John, the baptizer.

[SPEAKER_00]: The woman at the well.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got a man, we got a woman.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got John, who was a weirdo.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do a bugs and honey and live in the wilderness and work camels here.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can't tell me that's not weird.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: Then we got this empty soul, but she really, a play-up from the Himalayas.

[SPEAKER_00]: She had a team.

[SPEAKER_00]: She had a starting five and one coming off the bench.

[SPEAKER_00]: She probably won the one game play, she's probably won doing the play.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I mean?

[SPEAKER_00]: We're not glorifying that, we're just saying it.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so she'll play her from the Himalayas, she's doing like that.

[SPEAKER_00]: She got a team of five, plus one coming off the bench.

[SPEAKER_00]: Right?

[SPEAKER_00]: He said you have five husbands, and the one you wait now is not your husband.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's not in your starting five.

[SPEAKER_00]: He's your six man.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, sorry, y'all, I'm about to wrap this up, so we got a Jew and a Gentile.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got a rabbi in someone who's religious.

[SPEAKER_00]: We got John who said, behold, the lamb, we got her who said, come and see.

[SPEAKER_00]: And in both scenarios, people follow Jesus because of their testimony.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the thing, John the Baptist, being known Jesus before he was born.

[SPEAKER_00]: John was saved in the womb.

[SPEAKER_00]: John threw a Baptist fit in the womb and he's been showering since he was six months old.

[SPEAKER_00]: In gestation, not even six months out of the womb.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was six months in gestation.

[SPEAKER_00]: He still had a whole number of child messages ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: He was already saved.

[SPEAKER_00]: This woman in the world, she's just barely got.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's so saved, she ain't even broke up with her boyfriend yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's so newly sane.

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't even tell him, hey, we can't do this no more.

[SPEAKER_00]: She didn't have time to change her living arrangements.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's how quickly she just got saying it.

[SPEAKER_00]: He been saying from before birth, she just met the Lord, but both of them is way find this equally.

[SPEAKER_00]: All I can tell you is stop using your story and your past as an excuse for why God can't use you to point other people to him.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't think that you're not qualified because you're not irreverend or the decant or the single or the praise leader.

[SPEAKER_00]: Don't you know as long as you got a story worth telling that you ought to tell your story and God can use your story with all of your flaws, baptizing his grace to tell somebody else come and see a man who changed my life and people will run to Jesus because of you.

[SPEAKER_00]: All right, you don't believe me, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if y'all might know this, but I don't know if y'all believed this.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm from the hood for real.

[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'd be telling y'all, but I don't think I'll be late.

[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they really know, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna try to help you understand when I'm talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you know my parents were teenagers when I was born.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was raising a single-parent home.

[SPEAKER_00]: I lived in Harris' home projects.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, anything you think of projects was true about where I was raised.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, the dean was going to meet your school in Western Atlanta.

[SPEAKER_00]: I lived a Harris home project.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as a child, I was troubled.

[SPEAKER_00]: My behavior was terrible.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I would get all S's in my academics and all use in my condo.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was the case, like, it was like this up until ten, eleven grand.

[SPEAKER_00]: where my academics and my conduct was the exact opposite.

[SPEAKER_00]: All S's or E's, you know what I'm saying?

[SPEAKER_00]: And all U's, unsatisfactory.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was so bad that at the Boys and Girls Club, they put us through like different programs.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is why to this day, I'm indebted to the Boys and Girls Club.

[SPEAKER_00]: They put me through programs like, join your achievement, peer mediation, anger management.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm an elementary school and anger management.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm telling the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: He got so bad that they decided they were going to take us to the last experience to help change our life.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many all things scare us straight on TV?

[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't see scare us straight on TV.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went to scare us straight in life.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you think scared straight back in the day, it makes you take these little kids from low-income areas to a prison.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they would take these kids to a prison to show them how it feels to be in prison.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the goal was to scare them, how scary prison was, so hopefully they'll get straight, turn their life around.

[SPEAKER_00]: They took me to scare straight.

[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't have been no more than twelve years on them.

[SPEAKER_00]: We had scared straight, we had.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's one fifty-garnished street, right next to the bus station, and it's another facility across the street.

[SPEAKER_00]: Find me that.

[SPEAKER_00]: Never mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, tell me.

[SPEAKER_00]: You know what, never mind.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just trying to, I'm gonna weigh you fine now.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm trying to help you understand where it's set.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just trying to help you understand geography.

[SPEAKER_00]: Cory, we gon' baptize you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, let's get Cory in the pool right at the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just, is sheography, man?

[SPEAKER_00]: The great-hawn bus station, nevermind.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in, I'm in this prison.

[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I'm garnet.

[SPEAKER_00]: This back in the day, I'm Toyo, so it's like, nineteen, nine and eight.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we walkin' through the prison.

[SPEAKER_00]: They take us in and out of the sale blocks.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they got us talking with people and these people are given us life examples telling us why we shouldn't go to jail.

[SPEAKER_00]: So we are there listening, guess who they don't have talking to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have the police talking to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have a judge in their talking to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's no lawyers or attorneys in their talking to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: The people they had showing us the way was the people who had made mistakes that put them in a scenario to face consequences that they didn't wish on us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the goal was if you can hear from somebody who has made mistakes and has been convicted of crimes that they now have to do time, maybe in a scare you straight.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the problem with a lot of us is you don't think the law can use you because you're looking at your track record and you don't see judge, police or attorney.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's fine.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can be somebody who had a past at his checker, something you wish that your kids would never find out about, but don't you know Grace can take your story and use your story that helps somebody else avoid the same situation.

[SPEAKER_00]: The main thing you're ashamed about is the main thing that makes you Thorbreeze.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the main thing that makes you trustworthy.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the main thing that gives your word gravity when you speak.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you ought to

[SPEAKER_00]: Hope your mouth and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, and bring God glory for the grace he's giving you in your life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Say this with me.

[SPEAKER_00]: I am worthy to be listened to.

[SPEAKER_00]: I stood in front of men who's in jail so much time they'll never get out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they was my wayfinder.

[SPEAKER_00]: That didn't know me from Adam.

[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't owe me anything.

[SPEAKER_00]: These men were in jail, some of them, a hundred and fifty years sentences.

[SPEAKER_00]: And they didn't let that stop them from being a wayfinder.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what you gonna let stop you?

[SPEAKER_00]: You are worthy to be listened to.

[SPEAKER_00]: You just gotta believe it first.

[SPEAKER_00]: And believe that your testimony is something somebody needs to hear.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you get real about that, the Lord will let somebody stand in front of you, who used to have a use in conduct.

[SPEAKER_00]: One day, they're gonna grow up and be a pastor.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on to give a Lord a heck of a fight.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on to give God praise.

[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, how many people believe it?

[SPEAKER_00]: God can use my story.